Spatiotemporal evaluation of Rayleigh surface wave estimated from roadside dark fiber DAS array and traffic noise

Abstract

Seismic imaging and monitoring of the near-surface structure are crucial for the sustainable development of urban areas. However, standard seismic surveys based on cabled or autonomous geophone arrays are expensive and hard to adapt to noisy metropolitan environments. Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) with pre-existing telecom fiber optic cables, together with seismic ambient noise interferometry, have the potential to fulfill this gap. However, a detailed noise wavefield characterization is needed before retrievingcoherent waves from chaotic noise sources. We analyze local seismic ambient noise by tracking five-month changes in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of Rayleigh surface wave estimated from traffic noise recorded by DAS along the straight university campus busy road. We apply the seismic interferometry method to the 800 m long part of the Penn State Fiber-Optic For Environment Sensing (FORESEE) array. We evaluate the 160 virtual shot gathers (VSGs) by determining the SNR using the slant-stack technique. We observe strong SNR variations in time and space. We notice higher SNR for virtual source points close to road obstacles. The spatial noise distribution confirms that noise energy focuses mainly on bumps and utility holes. We also see the destructive impact of precipitation, pedestrian traffic, and traffic along main intersections on VSGs. A similar processing workflow can be applied to various straight roadside fiber optic arrays in metropolitan areas.